President Donald Trump has announced that the United States military conducted a \u201ckinetic\u201d strike on a small boat he accused of smuggling drugs out of Venezuela for the Tren de Aragua gang.<\/p>\n
In a Tuesday post<\/a> on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump shared black-and-white aerial footage of the bombing, which reportedly killed 11 people.<\/p>\n \u201cThe strike resulted in 11 terrorists killed in action. No U.S. Forces were harmed in this strike,\u201d Trump wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cPlease let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America. BEWARE!\u201d<\/p>\n The bombing took place early on Tuesday morning, according to the president. It marks a significant escalation in tensions with the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whom Trump has repeatedly accused \u2014 without evidence \u2014 of orchestrating transnational gang activity.<\/p>\n Trump first revealed<\/a> that the attack had occurred during an Oval Office news conference on Tuesday afternoon.<\/p>\n In an apparently spontaneous moment, Trump pivoted from an announcement about the new headquarters for US Space Command to break the news.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you come out and when you leave the room, you\u2019ll see that we just, over the last few minutes, literally shot out a boat, a drug-carrying boat,\u201d Trump told reporters in the room, as he stood at a podium surrounded by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of drugs in that boat. And you\u2019ll be seeing that, and you\u2019ll be reading about that,\u201d Trump continued, later adding:\u00a0\u201cThese came out of Venezuela.\u201d<\/p>\n The incident is the first known military strike the US has taken against alleged drug smugglers since the Trump administration began increasing military presence in the Caribbean last month.<\/p>\n Few details have emerged so far about the strike. Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on social media<\/a> that the strike had occurred in the \u201csouthern Caribbean\u201d, but no clearer location has been given.<\/p>\n Trump identified the people on board the boat as\u00a0\u201cnarcoterrorists\u201d who were \u201cat sea in International waters transporting illegal narcotics, heading to the United States\u201d.<\/p>\n The Reuters news agency reported that seven US warships and one nuclear-powered fast attack submarine are either in the Caribbean region or expected to be there soon. The vessels are carrying more than 4,500 sailors and Marines.<\/p>\n The deployment has piqued concerns over spiralling tensions with Venezuela, where Maduro has already responded by surging military resources to the coast.<\/p>\n On Monday, Maduro, a longtime rival of Trump, pledged to \u201cdeclare a republic in arms<\/a>\u201d in Venezuela if the country was attacked.<\/p>\n Maduro has long accused the US government of interfering in Venezuelan politics on behalf of his opposition. In Monday\u2019s remarks, he accused Trump of \u201cseeking a regime change through military threat\u201d.<\/p>\n Trump, meanwhile, has returned to the maximum pressure campaign that defined his foreign policy towards Venezuela during his first term, after brief hopes that his second term might mark a detente.<\/p>\n Shortly after his second inauguration in January, Trump sent his special envoy<\/a>, Richard Grenell, to the Venezuelan capital of Caracas to meet with Maduro.<\/p>\n Grenell returned from the trip with six American detainees who had been released from Venezuelan prisons. By March, Venezuela agreed to accept deportation flights from the US. More releases and prisoner exchanges<\/a> have happened since.<\/p>\n But the Trump administration has been increasing its pressure on Venezuela, using the country as justification for invoking the Alien Enemies Act<\/a>, a wartime law.<\/p>\n Trump has sought to portray immigration into the US as a criminal \u201cinvasion\u201d, and his administration has repeatedly drawn a direct line between groups like Tren de Aragua and the Venezuelan government.<\/p>\n According to Trump, Maduro controls the gang as part of a \u201cnarco-terrorism\u201d ploy to destabilise the US.<\/p>\n